First-Party Data Ownership: Playing the Long Game to Sell More Tickets

The digital marketing landscape is changing, and the importance of collecting and utilizing your own first-party data has never been greater.

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Many event marketers still rely on third-party marketing data for broader reach, justifying the costs with time savings and the promise of instant, large-scale awareness. Legacy ticketing providers also tout massive email lists and consumer marketing programs in their sales pitches, dangling access to decades of historical purchaser data.

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Three Pitfalls of Relying on Third-Party Data for Ticket Sales

1. Outdated contact information

It takes time to develop a large data set, and third-party historical databases often suffer from data decay. For successful engagement, clean, accurate, and up-to-date contact information matters far more than the database size, especially when returning customers spend 67% more than new customers.

2. Untargeted messaging

Without considering your audience's specific interests and behaviors, third parties may only be able to apply broad segmentation, resulting in ineffective campaigns. Relevant, targeted messaging to those who’ve previously interacted with your brand or are familiar with your event is far more effective.

3. The decline of third-party cookies

With increasing data privacy concerns, browsers like Chrome are phasing out third-party cookies. This shift increasingly limits marketers' ability to target, personalize, and report on campaigns using third-party data, making the collection and use of first-party data even more critical for effective marketing strategies.

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Why First-Party Data Is Essential to Sustain (and Grow) Ticket Sales

With many traditional marketing tactics on the way out, building, nurturing, and engaging your own first-party database is no longer optional; it's a non-negotiable. Leveraging your own data can be the key to effectively targeting and engaging your audience and selling more tickets. Here are three reasons why:

Ownership & control: 

Your first-party data set is both unique and relevant to your business, and it can’t be taken away from you.

Real relationships

Individuals who willingly share their data with you are signaling their interest in building a relationship with your brand and have the highest propensity to buy.

Revenue and Cost Efficiency

According to a Boston Consulting Group study, brands that invest in first-party data strategies and connecting data sources see significant uplifts in revenue and cost savings. These brands experienced double the incremental revenue from a single campaign and 1.5 times the cost efficiency, compared to companies with limited data integration.

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Our Approach to Data Ownership

We empower our partners with full ownership and control over their customer data. Unlike legacy ticketing providers and marketing companies that view purchaser data as a profit center, we focus on helping our partners build, analyze, and activate their first-party databases via a growing suite of advanced marketing tools and integrations. 

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Five Strategies and Features for Building a Robust First-Party Database

1. ‘Follow’ button: Capture Interest and Remarket to Fans

Our event pages include a customizable 'Follow' button. Fans can bookmark your event, and you can follow up with personalized messages or special offers. Direct outreach to fans who’ve signaled interest in your event typically converts 20% of followers into purchasers, boosting sales by an additional 5%.

2. Rewards: Incentivize Fans to Sell Tickets

Tixr Rewards encourages fans to share their personalized referral link to sell full-price tickets to friends and family in exchange for customized perks or cash back on their initial purchase. This peer-to-peer sales approach not only drives incremental ticket sales but also builds a database of your most dedicated fans and who’s actually attending your events in an extremely cost-effective way.

“We love giving our motivated attendees a chance to spread the word about [Lightning in a Bottle] and help us generate sales while racking up discounts and perks that make their festival more enjoyable and affordable.” — Dede Flemming, President of Do LaB, Inc. 

3. Waitlist: Capture Interest from High-Intent Purchasers While Mitigating Risk

Tixr Waitlist captures interest from high-intent purchasers by allowing them to pre-authorize their credit cards for first access to tickets. Once inventory depletes, Waitlist triggers and prompts would-be purchasers to join it, building you a new audience segment in Tixr Studio of fans with the highest purchase intent. Even if inventory never becomes available, you can still integrate these fans into your marketing efforts for future targeting.

“What we’re able to do is put together a second [Sundream] weekend and send all those people a direct message and say, ‘Hey, you guys are on the waitlist. We’re going to give you first access to tickets for the second weekend, which we’re announcing tomorrow.’” — Danny Robson, Rüfüs Du Sol’s Manager & co-founder of management firm Leisurely, in Billboard.

4. Fan Transfers: Know Who’s Actually Attending Your Events

Enable Fan Transfers to reduce fraud, keep tickets off the secondary market, and gain insights into who’s attending your events. As tickets transfer between Tixr accounts, you get the recipient's profile and contact information in your database records, even if they didn’t purchase the tickets themselves, plus comprehensive behavioral insights from transfer to check-in.

5. Integrations: Enhance and Activate Your Audience with Trusted Marketing Partners

Our integration partners, such as Tradable Bits, Hive, Cymbal, and Segment, connect data sources and action insights for more effective, targeted marketing campaigns. We focus on quality over quantity, and these vetted, purpose-built platforms offer tools like turnkey engagement campaigns, advanced segmentation options, and affinity modeling to amplify your efforts and drive sales. From building hype before events to finding similar fan profiles across platforms, our integration partners enhance your marketing strategies and outcomes in modern, creative ways.

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Investing in first-party data is not just smarter; it's essential for future-proofing your ticket sales strategy as the digital landscape shifts. Now is the time to build a robust, engaged first-party database to drive better marketing outcomes and sustainable growth.

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‍Schedule a demo and unlock the full potential of your first-party data with Tixr.